Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

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A.M.A.S itself connects to the Amiga
using two fly leads: One goes to the
serial the other to the parallel port.
To obtain the correct audio input
levels, the A.M.A.S software includes
an oscilloscope display for both left
and right channels either side of the
record and playback panel on the
main screen. These jump to the
incoming signal. if the signal is too
strong the peeks of the signals will
I.
Techno sound
U into sampling and intend to do
it Nfor
practical applications, I suggest
you L spend your money on a budget
E
item instead of spending over E50 on
S
something that might turn out to be a
five minute wonder. At 3D quid, you
can't
S
go far wrong with this well
thought y out product.
o The hardware consists of a small
box u which plugs directly into the
parallel ' port of the Amiga. Audio
rinput
to Techno Sound is via two RCA
e
type Phono sockets on the opposite
end to the 25-way D type computer
connector. r Unlike Mastersound,
Techno e Sound is a stereo sampler
which a makes it a very attractive
lpurchase.
l The software is the most colourful
of y the lot and looks very nice. But it
s
matters not how nice it looks, what
about its quality. Thankfully, for the
most
e
part, Techno Sound uses buttons
that r say what they do rather than
iusing
symbols which must be
orecognised.
Apart from that, the
buttons u that do have symbols upon
them s are large enough to make the
ldiagrams
easy to see.
Samples can be recorded at between
y
Mastersound
M budget samplers trend last
year A when it first appeared. Although
Sit's
not a stereo sampler, it's
Tmanufacturers
claim that it's probably
the E best selling Amiga sampler in the
UK R today. It's pretty easy to see why as
well.
S
OThe
hardware is nothing special at
U
N
D
flatten. A nice touch is the spectrum
analyser display which displays the
signal in it's frequency form from just
10Hz to 5.5kHz.
The MIDI functions allow A.M.A.S
to be connected to a MIDI keyboard so
that it may control the software. The
software can hold up to 10 samples in
memory (providing you've got
enough) each of which can be
triggered by a certain key on the MIDI
synth. The samples can also be
triggered from the Amiga's keyboard
5 and 35kHz and a feature unique to
Techno Sound allows sound to be
recorded in either 8 or 4-bit
resolution. The default is 8-bit but 4bit
recording will half the length of
samples but also reduce the sound
quality. Samples can be made in
stereo, mono or simulated stereo
which sound inferior to real stereo but
saves memory. Samples sound very
good. with little only slight hiss.
Files can be stored in IFT or binary
format for easy file transfer between
software. An interesting function
named RAMscan will scan memory
for any sample data that may have
been left there by programs previously
in memory.
Techno Sound is also the only
sample in this selection that has any
kind of effects menu. Effects can be
added in real-time to the incoming
audio or to the sample in memory.
Effects like echos and reverberations
can make Bros sound quite pleasant.
The hall effect adds a reverberation to
make your sound appear as though it's
in a large room or concert hall. Room
adds a shorter reverb to the sound to
make it appear to be recorded in a
smaller enclosure. In real-time mode a
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In fact it's very limited. The only
audio input connector is a mono 3,5mrn
jack plug. Mastersound connects to the
•
C
O
Vand
up to two stereo or four mono
Esamples
can be played
simultaneously.
R A.M.A.S is a very good product. It's
Scomprehensive
array of features
Tcombine
to provide a really good
sound. Samples are saved using the
Ostandard
IFF Amiga file format so that
Rthey
may be loaded and further
Y
manipulated with other music
software. However, no source code is
supplied so that you may includes
your samples in your own programs.
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final effect is available. Phaser sweeps
through the sound changing tonal
values vamping the sound quite
dramatically.
The manual supplied with Techno
Sound sports just 10 pages and only
describes the functions of the software
and doesn't really give any ideas on
it's use. However, (another first here)
the manufacturers have seen fit to
include an audio tutorial cassette tape.
This contains a good walk through of
the software and hardware. I won't say
that the recording technique is good,
but the guy speaking on the tape is far
too close to the microphone and if
your going to listen to it through your
hill, turn the bass down!
Techno Sound provides good
quality reproduction of the original
sound and offers features which are
not available on any of the other
samplers. The sound quality, to my
oars anyway, is certainly equal to that
of Pro Sound Designer and
Mastersound.
Amiga in the same way as virtually
every other sampler: Via the printer
port. It's small plastic case is colour
coordinated with the A500 and is
finished with a sticker displaying its
logo. The reason why Mastersound so
popular is its versatile software.
Besides all of the usual obligatory
features like record, playback and
listen, Mastersound possesses
something which no other sampler
has: A built-in sequencer. This allows
AMIGA COMPUTING November 1990 73